Welcome to Wanstead Climate Action – if you’ve not been in touch before, please subscribe to our email list, email us, and/or follow us on Facebook, X/Twitter and Instagram. And if you’re free on Saturday 22 June 2024, please sign up to come with us to the big Restore Nature Now march starting in Hyde Park.
Hopefully you’ve seen the poster we’ve been distributing, with tips for more wildlife-friendly gardening. Nature is under attack, and Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Only 3% of agriculture in the UK is organic and therefore free of artificial pesticides, so suburban gardens can be one of the best refuges for wildflowers, invertebrates and creatures who feed on them. The chirrup of house sparrows is still a gladdening sound in our hedges, but the fact their population has more than halved in 50 years with no sign of recovering actually puts them on the British Trust for Ornithology Red List.
The WCA book group has recently been discussing the best-selling Silent Earth by entomologist Prof Dave Goulson. It’s mostly about threats to insects – a combination of insecticides, other pesticides and pollution, loss and fragmentation of habitat, invasive species and pathogens, light pollution, all aggravated by the climate crisis. Insects are a vital chain in the food web, including for those sparrow chicks, so providing a bit of space and support to ‘mini-beasts’ can hugely add the biodiversity we enjoy on the Flats and Wanstead Park. The campaign for a Pesticide-Free Redbridge may see a temporary increase in pests, but hedgehogs are known south of George Green and the theory goes that they will soon make a meal of slugs so long as there is a wildlife corridor to let them roam in search of food.
The actions that Prof Goulson suggests for gardeners and allotment holders overlap with those in the poster:
- Grow plants that are food for insects (see his book The Garden Jungle), such as bird’s foot trefoil (for common blue butterflies), lavender, rosemary, thyme, chives, other herbs, and hardy (true) geraniums; also try to see many ‘weeds’ like dandelions and buttercups, foxgloves, ivy and nettles instead as wildflowers. Avoid annual bedding plants and be cautious of plants from garden centres that may have been treated with pesticides. Check how ‘BeeKind‘ your garden and plants are at the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.
- Don’t mow lawns so often. Consider leaving part of the lawn to become a wildflower patch: only cut it in September.
- Replace old fences with a hedge made from native plant species, allowing wildlife to come and go.
- Make a bee hotel. (See Friends of the Earth guide or NHM).
- Dig a pond using something like an old bowl for amphibians and insects. Create a hoverfly lagoon or other fascinating family projects from Dr Goulson’s colleagues in the Buzz Club.
- Grow your own fruit and veg using companion planting. Plant a fruit tree. Compost and leave a patch with old wood or logs.
The poster was originally designed for Sustainable Shaftesbury, who also have an interactive version. Thanks to them and also to Wanstead Community Gardeners and Stow Brothers for supporting the printing. Apologies that some of the leaflets have some tiny errors, where we’d left text that was more relevant to Shaftesbury than Wanstead.
Besides the individual actions you can take, you can also call for defence of nature at a national level. Here are two ways:
- Bring yourself and your friends along to the Restore Nature Now march on 22 June. WCA will be going as a group, but if you already belong to a wildlife organisation. (Unfortunately it clashes with the first day of the WREN Wildlife Weekend.)
- Ask any community organisations you are part of to endorse the Climate and Nature bill, which is gradually gathering support in Parliament. You can also sign up yourself and ask political candidates to do so too.
Wanstead Climate Action 